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UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

grocerygazette.co.uk

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Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#331

Post by emodendroket »

samhuk wrote: post #167

As a person living in the UK, I have definitely noticed a considerable rise in unit prices. One of many examples is that a loaf of my favourite bread increased from £3 to £4 recently, which was a shocker. Toilet roll prices, as ever what the news loves to talk about, has exploded, increasing by around 70% since 2020 by my anecdotal observation. A sad thought I have about inflation is the fact that it is, wittingly or…

I'm not so sure I would say that. Inflation is more harmful to those with assets, it generally accompanies a strong labor market, and the means central banks use to fight it amount to deliberately increasing unemployment.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#333

Post by wwweston »

tacker2000 wrote: post #204
samhuk wrote: post #167

As a person living in the UK, I have definitely noticed a considerable rise in unit prices. One of many examples is that a loaf of my favourite bread increased from £3 to £4 recently, which was a shocker. Toilet roll prices, as ever what the news loves to talk about, has exploded, increasing by around 70% since 2020 by my anecdotal observation. A sad thought I have about inflation is the fact that it is, wittingly or…

You are talking like inflation is some conspiracy wielded by “the rich” (who are they? Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?) against the “others”. Fact is the inflation we are seeing here is caused by the after effects of Covid, the Energy price surges caused by the Ukraine war and in the special case of UK - Brexit, which has lead to huge import shortages due to increased bureauc…

> You are talking like inflation is some conspiracy wielded by “the rich” (who are they? Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?)

No of course not. That'd be 90s-Mr-Burns territory.

Nowadays you pay a SaaS offering to do it for you if you're a landlord:

https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

So the question is -- is real estate the only market you'd do that in? Seems unlikely.

"If I had to guess, I would bet that the big food conglomerates have all signed up with some common AI-backed pricing software package, and that shares data between them. Or, at the very least, they've all started using AI algorithms to increase or decrease production of any number of goods to maximize their profits based on real-time sales and economic data. And since they're all probably contracting this out to the same or a handful of similar AI firms, the conclusions they reach are similar. If all the production companies are running algorithms that tell them to jack up their prices at the same time, well they all jack up their prices at the same time. They don't actually have to meet in some smoke-filled backroom to plot a price-increase conspiracy. They just all run similar algorithms that respond the same way to market trends. The consumer market is highly consolidated, with most goods having just 1-3 producers. If those few producers all sign up for the same AI price-setting software, there won't be price competition to punish needless price increases."

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/11gwm2y/europea...

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#334

Post by jdcarr »

FredPret wrote: post #307

I know this doesn't fit the European worldview, but if only they had Costco. They make 0-1% margin [0] on their groceries - which by the way is very high in quality. Essentially all their profit is from their annual membership fee. You have to buy massive quantities of everything though. This works well if you live in a huge North American house and have an SUV to transport your month's (year's?) groceries. [0] I saw…

There are about 30 Costcos in the UK. You’re right that they aren’t particularly useful for weekly grocery shopping unless you have a car and a large fridge.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#335

Post by anonymouskimmer »

elevenoh4 wrote: post #239
tacker2000 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking like inflation is some conspiracy wielded by “the rich” (who are they? Are they all friends with each other and plan all their schemes together?) against the “others”. Fact is the inflation we are seeing here is caused by the after effects of Covid, the Energy price surges caused by the Ukraine war and in the special case of UK - Brexit, which has lead to huge import shortages due to increased bureauc…

https://cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuter... You do not get it. This inflation is due to insiders (central bankers) printing money. Covid & ukraine are convenient excuses. Look up where this money ended up.

Unless people who can afford it are hoarding groceries an increasing monetary base shouldn't be affecting grocery prices. Only a decrease in supply versus demand, or increase costs of production, should be increasing grocery prices, if market manipulations aren't happening.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#336

Post by symlinkk »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #172
andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

I saw $6.99 for a pack of 12 flour tortillas yesterday. Could not believe it. At that price I'll try making my own.

I find comments like this weird, I never think about purchases that small. I honestly have no idea how much I pay for tortillas normally but $7 would not even be a blip on my mental radar

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#337

Post by jll29 »

WalterBright wrote: post #78
boc wrote: post #35

Demand for food is inelastic, so it makes sense that companies are raising prices as high as possible since people still have to eat. Generally this leads to price competition from other food brands, but when single companies own dozens/hundreds of food brands it’s easy to act like a cartel and keep prices high.

> Demand for food is inelastic I doubt it. I've read that Americans throw away 40% of their food. Obesity rates suggest people eat far more than they need to. And there are major choices in what to eat - cheap vs expensive calories.

Obesity reates in the US, from my observation, are a compound effect of the unavailability of affordable, healthy ingredients (fruits, vegetables) and cultural factors (a custom of never cooking healthy meals, for instance rice and vegetables, instead of consuming carb-heavy burgers and sugary milk shakes and coke at fast food outlets).

Friends in the US drove school buses during the day and worked at Wendy's at night, only to give back a substantial part of what they earned to Wendy's to cover their dinner there. They didn't even realize what slavery they were caught up in.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#338

Post by elevenoh4 »

jldugger wrote: post #309
elevenoh4 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuter... You do not get it. This inflation is due to insiders (central bankers) printing money. Covid & ukraine are convenient excuses. Look up where this money ended up.

> https://cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuter ... Help me understand: is this a stacked chart? Why does a chart that ends in 2021 show inflation in 2022 and 2023? > This inflation is due to insiders (central bankers) printing money. If this is about the money supply, why is food more affected than other products? IMO everything is a factor, and there is no one culprit, and therefore no one easy fix.

Imagine being a rational human looking at g7 central banks adding 40% to the money supply in https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106649548-159664277043...

I look forward to open source ai economic simulation tools - when you change variables like m2, you'll see what happens to inflation - and there'll be no more ambiguity

For now: ask gpt-4 yourself & get a lesson

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#339

Post by pjc50 »

WOTERMEON wrote: post #247
nyerp wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can choose between the individual products they buy, so it wouldn't be a problem if just some food items got expensive. But the price of food overall is inflating. That is a false binary. You can still buy flour (or naan or pita), cheese and tomato sauce instead of pre-made pizzas, sacrificing your time against rising food costs. You can buy lentils instead of steak, sacrificing your preferences against rising…

Plain flour is more expensive

Correct. Almost all flour-containing goods have a cheap version which is cheaper than making from scratch. Buying bread flour and making bread is usually a net economic negative, it's just something that people do for fun.

The exception is maybe if you've got a good Indian supermarket and can buy at the 10-20kg range, then churn out a lot of chapattis.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#340

Post by packetlost »

killjoywashere wrote: post #75
packetlost wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is anything that drives antitrust action, I imagine it would be food supply.

Historically, food supply doesn't drive anti-trust. It drives revolutions in the street.

Right, but a government worried about that might be inclined to be less friendly to monopolies.
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